[11:29 p.m.] : [2002-06-11]
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Desert Wind There was an old man with skin baked by the desert sun who told me that, when he was young, a storm had separated him from his caravan and it's spices, and he walked over rock and over sand for days and nights, seeing nothing but small lizards and sand-colored rats. But that, on the third day, he came upon a city of silken tents of all bright colors. A woman led him into the largest ten, crimson the silk was, and set a tray in front of him, gave him iced sherbet to drink, and cushions to lie upon, and then, with scarlet lips, she kissed his brow. Veiled dancers undulated in front of him, bellies like sand dunes, eyes like pools of dark water in aoses, purple were all their silks, and thier rings were gold. He watched the dancers while servants brought him food, all kinds of food, and wines as white as silk and wines red as sin. And then, the wine making good madness in his belly and his head, he jumped up, into the midst of the dancers, and danced with them, feet stamping on sand, jumping and pounding, and he took the fairest of all the dancers in his arms and kissed her. But his lips pressed to a dry and desert-pitted skull. And each dancer in purple had become bones, but still they curved and stamped in thier dance. And he felt the city of tents then like dry sand, hissing and escaping through his fingers, and he shivered, and buried his head in his burnous, And sobbed, so he could no longer hear drums.
He was alone, he said, when he awoke. The tents were gone and the ifreets. The sky was blue, the sun was pitiless. That was a lifetime ago. I asked him if it where a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agread, but said it was the desert's dream, not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged ehough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, untill he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go with them. |
